Meiolaniidae

Meiolaniidae is an extinct family of large, probably herbivorous stem-group turtles with heavily armored heads and clubbed tails known from South America and Australasia. Though once believed to be cryptodires, they are not closely related to any living species of turtle, and lie outside crown group Testudines, having diverged from them around or prior to the Middle Jurassic. They are best known from the last surviving genus, Meiolania, which lived in Australia from the Miocene until the Pleistocene, and insular species that lived on Lord Howe Island and New Caledonia during the Pleistocene and possibly the Holocene for the latter. Meiolaniids are part of the broader grouping of Meiolaniformes, which contains more primitive turtles species lacking the distinctive morphology of meiolaniids, known from the Early Cretaceous-Paleocene of South America and Australia.

Meiolaniidae

Armin Reindl · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
MeiolaniformesPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 47 million years on record.

The record covers at least 48 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 0 Mya.

Paleocene — about 0 of 33 occurrencesEocene — about 7 of 33 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 3 of 33 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 4 of 33 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 2 of 33 occurrencesPleistocene — about 16 of 33 occurrences57–55 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences55–53 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences53–51 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences51–50 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences50–48 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences48–46 Mya — about 1 occurrence46–44 Mya — about 1 occurrence44–42 Mya — about 1 occurrence42–40 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences40–38 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences38–36 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences36–34 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences34–32 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences29–27 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences27–25 Mya — about 1 occurrence25–23 Mya — about 1 occurrence23–21 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences21–19 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences19–17 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences17–15 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences15–13 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences13–11 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences5.7–3.8 Mya — about 1 occurrence3.8–1.9 Mya — about 5 occurrences1.9–0 Mya — about 13 occurrences48 Mya11.7 ka57 Mya0 Mya

33 occurrences of Meiolaniidae on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

33 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

8 formations

Sarmiento — 45.40°S, 67.72°WSarmiento — 45.40°S, 67.75°WSarmiento — 44.65°S, 69.17°WWyandotte — 18.77°S, 144.85°EWyandotte — 19.67°S, 145.54°EWipajiri — 28.29°S, 138.26°EWipajiri — 27.75°S, 140.73°EBannockburn — 44.91°S, 169.86°ERundle — 23.65°S, 150.98°EEtadunna — 28.35°S, 138.30°ECarl Creek Limestone — 19.08°S, 138.72°ECamfield Beds — 17.12°S, 131.52°E

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The named rock units Meiolaniidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 19 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Meiolaniidae and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Meiolaniidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

145 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 31 sites for Meiolaniidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

19 references

Each of the 33 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 7 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Meiolaniidae

Credit
Armin Reindl
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itMeiolaniformes through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lydekker 1887